11 Comments

It's interesting that you, as a game/PUA proponent, would use the number of lifetime partners that women have as an indicator of whether or not relationships are healthy. It's also worth noting that the New York survey uses the mean, while the national survey uses the median, which exaggerates the difference between the two.

Expand full comment

Rural US is in shambles in terms of relationships, despite the lack of anonymity

Is this really true? There seem to me large pockets of North America where relationships are basically healthy in spite of everything, and those are disproportionately located in rural areas.

The stats seem to back this up. New York women average 20 lifetime partners (see here), while the median number of partners for the country as a whole is, at least according to the stats, 4 (see here). (Some of the women are lying, but the liars are disproportionately among those with the highest numbers.)

Expand full comment

The competition to get offspring to reproductive age in enormous.

Any woman who thinks she can screw around and it will have no impact on her reproductive success is fooling herself, and the sort of men who will put the effort into ensuring that their children are a success want nothing to do with such women.

Expand full comment

I agree with Thursday but we should note that it is not strictly an "urban" phenomenon. Rural US is in shambles in terms of relationships, despite the lack of anonymity. I think the other factors are bigger -- reliable birth control and abortion, and economic changes (no reliance on either men or tribe, other than in the sense of taxes and benefits).

Expand full comment

Id replace 1 with Options. Networking effects makes anonymity, even in a large city, relative. People tend to orbit in the same circles and a lone woman travelling far out of her familiar circles often is a freak.

Expand full comment

At least here college-aged people can have anonymous sex without their peers finding out.

And condoms + the pill influence the scenarios greatly.

Expand full comment

Not to mention the lack of birth control in the paleolithic and modern women's economic independence from their mates.

I don't often agree with blogger Whiskey, but he names the three most important factors driving modern mating:

1. Urban anonymity2. Reliable birth control3. A woman's ability to support herself.

Expand full comment

"Modern high-school dating, on the other hand, is really quite like that of our ancestors."

And for college-aged people too. The "modern woman free to roam about town" without reputational consequences describes someone in her later 20s or beyond.

Expand full comment

Modern high-school dating, on the other hand, is really quite like that of our ancestors.

Expand full comment

Good post.

Have you changed your mind on on some mating related things recently?

Many of the earlier posts seemed to apply a "natural because paleolithic ..." thinking.

Expand full comment

Robin, Good post. I've been looking for reading on the same subject - would you (or anyone else who knows about this area) mind sharing what resources you've been reading?

Expand full comment